


The Scent of Blood

by Clockwerkchaos



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anti-Faunus Racism (RWBY), Faunus Weiss Schnee, Jacques Schnee's A+ Parenting, Side Story, Weiss Schnee Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28519791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwerkchaos/pseuds/Clockwerkchaos
Summary: Blood, that's what Blake remembers about her first meeting with Weiss. It was only the start of the mystery of her teamate.A sidestory/Omake for Craving the sky, by Najio.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Craving the Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28015515) by [najio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/najio/pseuds/najio). 



The smell of blood. That was the thing Blake remembered about first meeting Weisse. Not the first sensation, but the strongest. Smell was the sense most closely linked to memory. She read that once. Of course, the text had then gone on about how it was the most ‘primal’ sense, discarded in human evolution for more logical reasoning. It wasn’t hard to read between the lines when the words were practically highlighted.

Smell was Faunus’, and humans resented. Even their cities seemed to resent it. The fact that some claimed they could smell Faunus stink was laughable, humans couldn’t smell anything, you could tell by how much they stunk. How much their cities stunk. How they loved to build their trash piles and factories and mines, all the smell of a human city. Then in perhaps the final indignity, they send Faunus to them. When they were caked in the sweat of the mines and dust, humans would complain about how they stunk, because only then could they smell anything.

Technically the first thing Blake noticed was the hair. The white splotch led to a quick inspection, (from a safe distance) to confirm, Schnee. The absolute last thing she needed. She’d intended to avoid her. Not that part of her didn’t want to give a good punch, but she wasn’t here for trouble. She didn’t need eyes on her, so avoid, and hope that the Schnee failed out. Not that that seemed likely, in her experience, the rich only ever seemed to fail up, but perhaps that up would not be at Beacon.

That would have been that, had not the explosion happened. A ringing in her ears. Her first thought was again to stay away. Faunus learned it was never a good idea to be at the sight of anything that went wrong. But then the voice cut through. Aristocratic, haughty, the voice that said everyone else was there to serve them, and that they could not fail, only be failed. Confronting her was stupid and dangerous. But, if Blake were smart and safe, she wouldn’t be here. Wouldn’t have the past she did.

In for a penny, in for a pound, they said, and so she brought up the Schnee’s own corruption, telling the aristocrat to her face what her dust had been founded on. It was only this close that she smelled it, blood.

Weiss was bleeding from the accident. 

Which made no sense. Weiss was treating the loss of her dust as a reason to execute the girl in front of her. If a single hair on her head had been harmed, bloody murder should be the hue and cry. Yet, not a mention. A second sniff gave a cottony smell, so likely her period. Still, the smell lingered and was the memory she associated with the meeting.

It was a good memory. She got to tell off a Schnee, and there were no consequences. No security guards to drag her away. No informing her the next day that she wasn’t right for the school. Nothing. She got to calmly tell a Schnee off, while the Schnee ranting and growled. One of them was acting like the animal Faunus were always claimed to be, and it wasn’t Blake.

* * *

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end, and, in perhaps the universe’s greatest joke, they were now on the same team. Weiss, or, as she thought of her then, Schnee, was exactly what she thought she would be. But her teammates weren’t. When the time came, Schnee was alone, and Blake was supported. It was nice, though Blake wondered if it would have been such if Velvet hadn’t been the most harmless-looking Faunus on the planet. She may have been open about one thing, but she wasn’t nearly as harmless as she looked, she wouldn’t still be in Beacon otherwise.

Blake could have left it there, ended it, but something compelled her not to. She could just hear the dry textbook, in the voice of an old human professor. “Seeing one isolated from the herd, and knowing the scent of blood means injury, the cat Faunus pounces. Not with claw and fang as her ancestors, but with words and threats.” Even now, those books, ones she’d read to try to understand herself, still lived rent-free in her head, and she resented it. She resented a lot of things.

Perhaps it was the blood. It was, privately, driving Blake nuts. Weiss still had the scent of blood, most caked, but she swore she could smell some fresh. Yet nothing, not a single peep from Weiss. It wasn’t a period, no this long. So what? Some sort of disease? Why hide it? Pride? Self-destructive pride certainly felt like a Schnee, but still, Blake couldn’t help but feel like there was something she was missing.

Ultimately though, Blake thought it wasn’t the blood, not really. She had sworn she wasn’t going to have to live as she did before. She wasn’t going to tolerate it, and she wasn’t going to have to. She got Ruby and Yang’s back up first. A lesson she learned long ago, if you want to have any sort of disagreement with a human, make sure you have a human or two backing you up. Otherwise, well, obviously you were being irrational and in the wrong.

And, that, should have been that. The battle won, Weiss vanquished. Blake had long resolved to not let people like Weiss live rent-free in her head. 

Yet it somehow wasn’t. 

It wasn’t for any of them. Ruby hopped from foot to foot, barely still half the time as she tried to deal with the tension in a team she seemed hardly ready for.

Yang was if anything, worse. “Do you think she’s eating? It seems she isn’t, can you… I don’t know, smell anything wrong?” 

Blake held her tongue on that and sighed. “ Can’t smell if someone isn’t eating.” She had replied. It wasn’t like she could get mad at Yang. Yang met well. She always met well. Yang just… barreled through things and talking about treating Faunus as a mystical power source bothered her was just going to sail right over Yang’s head. But that’s how she was, big and bright and boundless. Not only her size and hair and personality but also her smell. Blake, personally couldn’t see why anyone thought they needed extra-quadruple strength deodorant, but telling Yang she smelled fine without it was the sort of thing humans thought less of you for, and Blake really didn’t want Yang to think less of her.

The other reason she couldn’t get mad was because Yang was right. Not about the eating, but she could smell Weiss, blood, and wounds, always blood and wounds. It was worse sometimes, and better others. Sometimes, it was so small you could barely tell, but, once one had caught the scent, you could always faintly detect it. Weiss smelled of death and rot.Why had she even come to the school? If you watched carefully, you could see the occasional flare-ups of pain. Not that Weiss would ever admit it. But a combat school for someone with whatever disease she had seemed a poor idea. Though even so, Weiss managed to keep up, aided as much by her access to dust amounts that could field small armies as any actual talent. Perhaps it was a genetic condition, Blake hoped so, and that her father was rotting away just as Weiss was.

Even with the smell, it was the eyes that next drew Blake. Stares, or glances, really. So quick you could miss them. Nor were they of the expected hatred. That had worried Blake, at first, because there was one type of look that was worse than hatred. Lust. Everyone ‘knew’ Faunus animal instincts made them ‘lustful’ and ‘wild’. A hollow joke if Blake ever heard one. If you wanted to talk lust, walk down the street with cat ears. For all that humans called them ‘catcalls’ Blake had heard far more humans make them than Faunus.

She had learned some simple rules. More clothing didn’t help, if anything, trying often made them bolder. Never be caught alone, if something happened between a Faunus and a human, well it depended on who was who. If it was a male Faunus and a female human, then clearly the Faunus had raped her. If the reverse, clearly it had been willing, everyone knows how lusty and untrustworthy Faunus were. If they were the same sex, well it was what the human wanted. She hadn’t ever had the worse happen but… but she knew those who had.

She’d only found two things that stopped it. The first was power, break someone’s arm, and the others stopped. But that drew authorities who had been so ready to ignore you before. The second was the only piece of clothing that mattered. Her little bow. It was, personally, an ironic delight that she could wear anything else, and, as long as the bow was on, be freer. Not entirely free of lust, but it felt like less. 

Weiss, however she looked then looked away, only in brief glances. In Blake’s experience, half the point of lusting after Faunus seemed to be being able to dominate, to make them afraid, not to shy away. Respecting Blake’s decisions was not in line with that. Maybe it was self-preservation, given what everyone else thought of Weiss’s attitude. But Weiss had never displayed self-preservation before, so it seemed odd to start now. 

Yang’s solution to the growing tension and Weiss had been, in typical Yang fashion, to throw food at it. Sadly, after she had confirmed the food was eaten, she seemed to have considered her job done, and left, leaving the two of them alone.. Weiss was studying like a mad-woman, which was just another mystery. Everything else aside, Blake couldn’t fault Weiss’s work ethic. Yet it felt very… off. Granted, it was her personal knowledge, but those who had been servants tended to talk of the aristocratic families of possessing a certain… arrogance, about their studies. The certainty that they would get everything right, and that of course, the world would bend to them. Weiss studied like someone who was certain she would fail. Going over material Blake knew Wiess already knew. She studied like she knew she was stupid and was determined to succeed anyway. Which made no sense.

So here they were, both sneaking glances at the other as they read and wrote. That was the irony of this, she supposed. For all of Weiss’s glances, Blake was just as guilty. This mystery of blood and rot and eyes was driving her insane. Blake didn’t usually like being the first mover, but… but she was pretty sure Weiss would rather physically cut off a limb or two rather than just talk, so it was going to fall to Blake. She signed, waiting until the next glace, one long enough that neither could pretend it didn’t happen.

“You keep doing that.”


	2. Sweat and Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Yang, and dogs, and kabobs, and gyms, and things other than Weiss.

“Don’t let them live rent-free in your head.” One of the many, many different bits of advice she’d gotten on how to be a Faunus. Personally, Blake didn’t much care for it. “Just ignore them.” Only works if they let you. Its only taunts, until the decision to escalate to thrown things. It’s only cat-calls until you are alone, and a drunk human decides no doesn’t mean no from animals. It only dirty looks, until it isn’t and becomes one of a hundred things.

And yet… and yet… here, she was human. Here only her team knew. So she could ignore, could remove them. And yet she couldn’t, you don’t learn how to keep yourself safe for years and have it removed. And Weiss felt like danger. Not only a Faunus hater but one she didn’t understand, one who wasn’t safe. Entitlement, and alienation, that was what one book had said were the most dangerous comb. Weiss was the ultimate child of privilege, and as for alienation, Weiss seemed to want to cocoon herself from the world.

Still, for once, nothing happened. It was three to one, and at the end of the day, Blake knew Weiss was far more sickly than she let on. Weiss wasn’t a threat… or at least Blake hoped. If Weiss ever dropped to her father that she was roommates with a Faunus… She wanted to believe Ozpin wouldn’t tell him to leave. But her experience with how institutions acted when powerful rich humans wanted to screw over Faunus left her doubtful.

Still, Weiss hadn’t done it yet. And wasn’t even trying to taunt her. So, for now, just now, she was going to try to kick the bum out of her head and focus on other people.

Like, Yang, for instance.

She’d once heard someone say Yang was like a big fluffy dog. In Blakes’s opinion, this was slander. Dog’s were the epitome of the ‘just ignore them the problem.” They barked at you for no reason, and humans, even ones who were nominally sympathetic, just chuckled and dismissed it. But how could you? Every dog was a mass of fang and teeth, and even the smallest one could draw blood. Blake had seen their bites when the police had decided to loose them, had watched the blood. To ignore them was the privilege of those who never had to worry about them.

Though… perhaps, if she was being high-minded, she should not blame the dogs. One of the fellows she’d known at some of the actions had pointed out that the dogs were often not random, but followed humans. Look at any security check, and watch how the dogs ‘coincidently’ went after the people who the security guards wanted to check. Dog’s barked at Faunus because when they did humans showed approval. Even the so-called ’moderates’, the people who insisted they weren’t racist, would laugh. Look, it’s a dog barking at a cat, how funny, how hilarious, and when she was scared, even funnier.

Blake was far from the only Faunus who often preferred the honest hatred of unabashed racists to the duplicitousness of those who would claim moderation. 

Yang was big, friendly, fiercely defensive, caring, though not exactly a deep thinker. And seemed to barrel through obstacles. Because, as she put it “I get knocked down, but I get up again.” This was probably the best argument for Semblance’s coming from personality that Blake had ever seen.

It was a fascinating thing to watch her, Blake who tried to stand away from the crowd, her semblance let her remove herself from attention. Yang stood in it. A giant beacon that said ‘look at me’. An utter certainty and a certain arrogance. Yet it was a generous arrogance “I am awesome, you are my friend, so you are awesome. We are awesome.” And of course, you were her friend, who wouldn’t be? It was so unlike what Blake knew.

The first time Blake really remembered Yang deciding someone was not her friend, was Cardin. Weiss also got put into a category of ‘possibly not my friend. Blake admitted that got a thrill watching Yang be the first to yell back at Weiss. It was, perhaps the first time she felt like it might be different here. She wanted to be cautious, plenty of humans were happy to be ‘heroes’ once, but wouldn’t want to actually room with a Faunus. The smart thing to do was to wait and watch the sisters before telling them.

“Oh cool, just so we are open about things, I’m trans btw.” No waiting, no careful consideration, just charging forward. Blake could have laughed, it was so Yang. She’d felt like a maniac telling the sisters so soon after the incident, and Yang just… trusted her back, instantly. “So do you want me to go confront her?” 

“No,” Blake said, pushing identity revelations that shouldn’t even matter out of the way. “This is something I want to do myself. I’d like you to be there, but don’t start anything.” I don’t need humans coming to save me, she didn’t say. People never liked that. 

“Sounds good” Blake gives a thumbs up. Even so part of her wondered if they really would. You didn’t go here if you didn’t want to be a hero, and it was so easy for humans to make it about their story. “If she tries anything, let me know.”

She didn’t, and that… was that. 

* * *

“You want to go out to get something to eat?” Such a deceptively simple phrase.

“Why me?” Blake had asked. She had been reading a really good book and had no intention of going out.

Yang held up her hand. “Cause one, I want to go out. Two I want to go out with my teammates. Weiss couldn’t be dragged away from studying and I already made sure she ate and Ruby…” Yang sighed. “Ruby doesn’t do variation in food. So you were the only option. I mean, not that you were my last choice. You were definitely not. I want to get to know you.”

And so out they went. She could feel some part of her looking down with shame at giving in. But telling racist assholes to fuck-off was easy. Telling hyper-friendly blondes no was proving much, much harder. 

“You like fish, huh?”

There were lots of ways Blake could have responded to Yang’s comment about her choice of dish. Ignore it. Walk away. Angrily ignore it. In the end, a short “Is there something wrong with that?” Was given, growled, a treacherous part of her mind said.

“No, no, just wondering.” Yang backpedaled. “What makes you like it? Is it like something your mother made? Did you grow up by the sea? Or like, is it the health? You seem like the kind of person who goes for that. Unlike Ruby, getting her to eat a balanced diet is terrible. At least Weiss will eat whatever I throw at her.”

“The smell.” Blake offered.

Yang looked at her a moment, confused. “I didn’t think most people liked the smell of fish.”

“They are objectively wrong.” Yang raised an eyebrow. “Most people,” and here Blake tapped bow. “Most people can’t properly appreciate food. What we taste is as much what we smell as what we taste with our tongue. And since most people have no sense of smell, they have no idea what they are talking about food-wise. Fish has the strongest, most complex smell of any meat, and that makes it the king among foods. Lesser meats need to be seared, but fish retains its power even when raw.”

Yang nodded. “That’s so cool. So like, can you smell other things? Can you smell someone else’s fear?”

Blake signed. “No, I can’t just mind read people. Though I can smell sweat and other things that… people, all people, convey a lot more than they think through smell, but like, I’m not magic. I just can smell better.”

“Oh.” Yang rubbed the back of her head. “Sorry about the sweat. I uh… I try to make sure it’s covered up.” A moment later she muttered, “maybe I need to upgrade?” 

“Yang, I assure you, the last thing you need to do is upgrade. I haven’t smelled your sweat, I can barely smell anything with that horrible deodorant you use. No one needs deodorant that strong, even guys don’t need one that strong.” 

And so they continued to talk and eat, and for a time, that was that.

{hr}{/hr}

“Blake I need your help.” That was where it had started. At an unnaturally early hour.

“Muga-guh?”

“So I bought a couple of different deodorants to try, but like, I’m not sure which one works best so I need a buddy to help test them.”

Which was why Blake had found trudging to the weight gym before the sun came up. Considering what the exact rules were about murder. “Oh hey, I got you some breakfast. They have these great grilled fish kabobs and tea. I mean the place normally does curry and coffee but I wasn’t sure how you felt about that.”

Blake considered the container in front of her, and the wafting aroma that was so strong she couldn’t comprehend how she hadn’t noticed it before. As she took it, she considered that, perhaps, murder was not necessary. A few bites and a sip and consensus about the reduced necessity of murder was reached. Yang would live, for now. WIth this reached, another thought entered her head. “When did you get this?”

“Morning run.”

“But it’s- never mind.”

After she settled in, she had to admit this wasn’t terrible. She was enjoying, properly enjoying, savoring the smell, morning kabobs, and tea. Watching a very well muscled blond in a gym outfit straining her muscles. This was going into the memory bank, tea and kabobs were going to have their own memory now.

“Hey Blake, how much do you weigh? Like 150 pound, can’t be more than 200. Look, I’m gonna bench press two of you, one on sitting on each side of the bar.” Blake watched as Yang strained and forced her to recategorize her ‘teammate least likely to do something unbelievably stupid and hurt themselves” to put Ruby at the number two spot. 

Ruby.

“Okay.” Yang said, “Smell test time.”

“Shower first.” 

“Right.”

Several minutes later, Yang came out, her hair still wet enough even the small rebellions hairs were no longer sticking up. “So, I’m going to start with the light stuff, let me know when I’m good. Test, one, light.”

“You are good.”

“What?” It was nice, once in a while, to see Yang surprised.

“You smell fine with that and a shower.”

It was surprising how hard it was to convince her otherwise, and when Blake finally, Yang had given a weak chuckle as she sat down by the wall. It was strange, seeing Yang looking vulnerable for a moment. Blake wanted, wondering if she should leave. She didn’t.

Instead, Yang talked. Yang talked about how she tried to not let anyone tell her what she was, but this got through. When people told her she stunk like a boy’ at some point it must have sunk in. She didn’t, human novels… human novels were silly, comparing humans to flowers or fruit. People didn’t smell like that, perfume did. People… smelled like people, but if she had to give descriptions, mean and earth and perhaps, on some, wood, would be better descriptions. Personally, Blake thought Yang had a meaty smell, but humans tended to get upset if you told them that. 

Instead, she talked about the similarities they had. About her encounters with the poison. About how oftentimes she worked extra hard at things because of her worries. Sometimes, she thought she only seemed to be a controlled person because she was worried about point ‘savage’. Her personal quadruple strength deodorant. Yang had laughed and seemed better, and Blake herself… it was nice to have someone who understood at least, part of who she was. They came back to the dorm, chatting until Weiss, who’s obsessive studying, told them to shut up so she could concentrate.

Over the next few weeks, Blake learned more about Yang. Some were big. She had worked out pretty early that she worried about Ruby, but learned that Yang wasn’t sure that was a good thing. She learned that when she first started transitioning was after her stepmother died, and she argued that she needed to become a girl ‘because Ruby doesn’t have a mother, so I’m going to have to be an older sister’. Her dad hadn’t budged until she’d had to finally admit she wanted it for herself, not Ruby. It was so easy to justify so much that she wanted as for Ruby, which was why she felt mixed about the same team.

Some things she learned were smaller, such as rounding tips because she got enough math in school. Or exactly how many places she was banned with for brawling. How badly she wanted to just shake Weiss and yell ‘stop being self-destructive you silly person’.

And when Yang asked her to the dance, she learned that Yang was interested. She should have smelled it coming, she hadn’t. “Oh um… I’m not sure, let me think.” She had gotten out. Yang has smiled and given a thumbs up.

Yang was nice. Yang was pretty. Yang was, if she were, to be honest, someone she enjoyed. There was only one problem. Yang was human.

She could hear the howls with that thought. The commentator that said how this showed she was “racist against humans”. As if it was the same to reject dating someone and to beat, kill and enslave(whatever they want to call it). To see them as lesser. Respect had two meanings. Respect in the sense of a peasant to his lord, subservience, and respect in the sense of treating people like people, not animals. “If they don’t treat humans with respect then we won’t treat Faunus with respect.” They usually met the first for humans and the second for Faunus.

It was easy to imagine that it would be similar if she was a shark or lizard, something that people didn’t love… or more correctly lust, after. Not that even that was fair, she knew, someone lusted after anything. But cat Faunus. Humans loved to lust after then. The evil, sexy, temptress lusty cat Faunus. For it must be them it was the often not even eighteen-year-old Faunus worker who lusted after the fifty-year-old human owner. Faunus were lusty, humans controlled.

Yang’s not like that. Said some other voice inside her. She’s nice, and kind, and cares about what we say.

Did she? Must humans just lusted, but you got some who thought themselves grande for their lust. Who saw themselves as enlightened, not discriminatory for their attraction. Yet they showed their true face when you said ‘no’. Anger, shock, resentment. If accepted, it was even worse, and they saw themselves as rescuing you. As your benefactor, not a true equal, and should anything happen it was your fault.

And it would be her fault. Ruby was her sister, and Weiss would be ready to jump at a moment’s notice. If this went wrong, her team was in an even worse position, rejecting now might be some danger, but dating was too much of a risk, no matter how nice she seemed. She wasn’t that stupid.

Yes, she was, shouted the other voice. She hadn’t even realized that a girl who took her dinner then to her favorite activity and wanted her to see her muscles and smell her was flirting with her. She was that stupid.

It was a terrible idea.

So is being a hunter.

Why would we even want to?

A mental whiteboard was given, with a written explanation  
Girl=pretty.  
Me=stupid.

The treacherous part of Blake’s brain then provided illustrations, drawn from the wealth of ammo Blake’s reading habits had given it.

Over the next few days, this conversation went back and forth in her head, making the situation in the door room unbearable. Yang clearly wanted to ask her if she had decided, but was trying not to. Giving the impression of a child who was told not to move but clearly wanted to. Weiss, meanwhile, rejected Neptune and was being the usual gaping wound in the team from which happiness went to die. Only Ruby seemed remotely together, looking happier than usual while somehow missing half the tension undercurrents. 

In the end, it came down to a dilemma. Was Yang ‘like the others’. If so, rejection was safest, it might cost her, but it was better to endure it now than put herself in a vulnerable position. But if not… then it might be nice. The irony was that the only way Weiss could find out quickly was to reject her, if Yang took the rejection well and didn’t push she would want to date her, if Yang didn’t respect it, then she had to hold her ground.

The little voice, the one that supplied what good people thought, supplied its thoughts about Faunus games. Cat’s cruelly playing with someone’s heart and going for the opposite of what they wanted. But, while she could not entirely silence that voice, she didn’t have to obey it. One of the biggest rules she’d been drilled with when with the White Fang was, if you felt like you should ignore your safety for the sake of being ‘good’ then that goodness was nothing more than oppression masquerading as something else. If games kept you safe, play games.

“Oh, okay that’s fair.” Yang was a terrible liar, and the disappointment was clear, even so, she gave a smile, and a thumbs up while speaking loudly in a too cheery voice. “Well if you have someone else I hope you have fun with them. Or no one, I mean, you don’t need a date. Just ah” She stopped, quieting down and sounding more worried. “Just please at least do something, don’t pull a Weiss and avoid everyone, okay?”

Blake smiled and felt relief and joy. “You know what, let’s go.”

“Oh, really?! Um, you sure?”

“Yeah.”

In retrospect, Blake should have considered the danger of Yang’s happiness. Chest crushing hugs were not a hazard she had planned on.

It would be a night to remember.


	3. Four Smells

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One Night. One Dance. Four Smells.

Four smells

**Fabric-**

Being ordinary was a privilege.

As Blake browsed the rows of racks for a dress for the dance, she was alone. No salespeople watching her lest she shoplift. No stares of suspicion from customers. Not even so much as a peep when she took a stack of dresses to the fitting room. Nothing. Perhaps, if she had been some-place higher end, a personal tailor would have come to aid her. Unfortunately, it turned out that you didn’t get a free sack of cash once you managed to pass for human, a thriftier store was the order of the day.

Blake wasn’t too broken up, she wouldn’t even know what to do. Admittedly, Weiss probably had experience with it, and Blake could vaguely picture her with a personal tailor trying on clothes. While at this point Blake…. Didn’t hate her, the feelings there were complicated and not enjoyable. And tonight was a night she was determined to enjoy.

Instead, she opted for the most mundane of problems. What to wear? Elegant or fun? Sexy or conservative? Part of her wanted to go bold. Let the world see her, cat Faunus and all, in the hottest thing there, that Yang wanted her, and no one else. The sensible part shot that down. One night was not worth the many mornings afterward, she was going to finish her training without dealing with it and that was final. Besides, the last thing she needed to do was live the stereotype of the catgirl.

_So now we are going to let humans choose for us?_ The thought bubbled up as Blake’s stomach twisted. Was she choosing a conservative dress just because it somehow "broke expectations”? But then the opposite could be true. She’d as a kid she had once been accused of reading only ‘to pretend you're smart’. That, obviously she couldn’t simply enjoy it, a Faunus like her could only read to try to pretend to be smart, or, as unstated, human. A Faunus couldn’t love something as a personal action, they could only do it because it’s what Faunus did, or because they were trying to be different.

It was bullshit, but the worst part was when she felt it was right. She could never feel entirely certain of her own actions because of the looming spectacle that was her existence as a Faunus. To love your actions for themselves, because you are you, was the privilege of those deemed not to have a trait by which all actions must be judged. The privilege of the ordinary.

Still, if a task seemed too big; break it down into smaller parts. Start with eliminating those that didn’t fit. Those that felt too uncomfortable. Those that looked fine on the rack but not on her. One by one, the candidates were whittled. And in the end, it didn’t help. She had still narrowed it down to two, both embodiments of the opposite ends of the spectrum, to be not to be. Or no, not to be was simply an absence, to be, or to be the opposite. The trial of a Faunus.

But then, it wasn’t really being a Faunus, was it? It was easy sometimes to feel that way, that it was inherent. But one of the most important lessons she was ever taught was that it was a choice people made. There was no divine decree that said that people must follow Faunus because they believe them to be thieves. There was no natural law that said that they must be considered animals. It was choices, by people that hurt Faunus, not who they were. It was also choices by people that spilled the poison she had told Weiss of, not Blake’s existence as a Faunus.

And so, she would use her actual preferences to determine which one. Humans were limited to sight and touch for their choices, but she had another. One that no human would consider acceptable criteria for a dress unless it was so foul that they could notice. They could try to poison the idea of smell, but the choice of smell, humans couldn’t touch. They just couldn’t appreciate the difference between fabrics, and could only hurl insults such as make the vaguest of insults like claiming a love of trash or implying fish was terrible. Insults to childish and uninformed that they were practically a joke.

And so Blake let the smell of fabric decide.

**Fish-**

Her dance date started with a question. “Why do you smell like fish?” Blake asked, trying to suppress the suspicious part of her that wondered it this had all been some cruel prank.

“Oh, you noticed it,” Yang said, looking slightly embarrassed. “I was trying to keep it light.” Blake raised an eyebrow. “Whiiich now that I think about it, should probably have been a lot lighter.” The eyebrow invited her to continue. “So I was reading a magazine and it said that perfumes are all wrong. Everyone thinks that you should go for flowers and stuff, but the actual most popular smells are things you eat. Things people like, like fruits, herbs and spices. So I thought about that and thought about how you said the smell of fish was the best part of it and thought, it seemed like a good idea?”

Blake managed to hold it together for only a couple of moments before she burst out giggling.

“You, ah, you want me to take it off?, I have enough time to shower and-”

“No, no it’s cute.” Dumb, ridiculous, and cute.

And so they went, and Blake tried to enjoy a night of dance,she and her girlfriend, two normal girlfriends. Or would have if her brain wasn’t a treacherous, overthinking traitor. Nor did it have the decency to even be deep. It could be musing on the fragileness of the night, permitted only by a single bow. It could be thinking of why she considered a dance like this, so human coded ‘normal’ rather than her own experiences, even as she had not tried to pass for human for most of her life. Maybe angst about if she was starting to see “human” as her default state, or consider against the fraught interaction of the power dynamics of dating humans.

Her brain could have been doing all of this. Instead, it was thinking about fish. That ridiculous smell was really kinda intoxicating. It was debating on the perfect girlfriend. One side arguing, that clearly a fish-Faunus was perfect, the other countering for Yang. Blake attempted to remind herself that this was ridiculous as

  1. Judging the best girlfriend purely on Faunus species was terrible.

  2. She liked Yang so far but had to remember you couldn’t really know someone, at their heart, and even if you did, people can change.

  3. The idea of a ‘perfect’ girlfriend was a fantasy, and as fun, as it was to read, demanding that perfection either meant rejecting everyone or pretending someone’s flaws didn’t exist.




The arguing sides considered this and then reached a conclusion. Fish-Yang. The debate then began on what this consisted of. First came a fish-tail, and then thought of how Yang would even move on land then. Which in turn supplied a number of images. Yang in a wheel-chair, using it to go at absurd speeds as Ruby pushed it, both determinedly seeing how fast she could go. Which forced her to stop to suppress a giggle. Then crunches, which imaginary Yang probably broke trying to punch someone with, forcing another spasm. Not that that would stop her, as her imaginary Yang proceeded to use her hands to crawl across the floor, chasing a screaming Cardin who was only now realizing that not only was she managing to keep up with him, she was gaining.

It’s rude to break out in giggles at a dance. It’s rude to break out in giggles at a dance. She desperately repeated to herself. Slowly she managed to composer herself, until the walls of her will were assaulted again, with one single thought.’The smell is nice, but what’s the point of fish if you can’t eat it?’ At which point her brain, honed on years of absolute filth, was waiting with all manner of suggestions. Worse, she could hear every single possible pun on ‘eating’ being made in Yang’s voice. Blake needed to get out of the public eye, then she could have a giggle fit. “You want to go for a walk?”

She made it to the gardens before finally burst out laughing. Yang, inquired, and, without thinking, Blake told her. “I don’t believe that’s the real reason.” Blake looked at her. “I mean that sounds kinda fishy.” Blake snorted. Which, unfortunately, only encouraged Yang, and led to her _pun_ ishment.

The killjoy part of her pointed out how much worse it could be. Everyone public had seen Blake instigate the leaving, and if Yang had wanted, she could have done anything and anyone would believe her. Another part pointed out that she wasn’t helpless, her semblance was a get out of things card, and Yang wouldn’t anyway. Which got the ‘do you really know her, remember how _he_ seemed at first. The entire thing left her feeling worse, why couldn’t she _relax._ Just this once? TAt least she wasn’t running the mood for Yang, who had happily managed to get on the topic of her exes.

“- she was a bear Faunus. Had hair on her arms, which people made fun of her for, called her guy arms and stuff, which was why I think we hung out. I um, kinda empathized with that. Though she could also lift, we hung out and she was probably the best spotter I ever had. Didn’t always think things through, like she brought me home, only turns out she wasn’t supposed to have friends over and when her dad came home she panicked, so I panicked. Which was dumb but we were like 13? So she had me hide in her bed, but then she notices it and pulled back the covers, and I freaked, running fast enough he swore I channeled my own rose petals. Thought I gotten away with it till I saw him and my dad talking, laughing themselves silly about the entire thing. ”

Yang paused smiling. “We started dating later, even if she did keep insisting I stole her food. But really, if you leave it during dinner to go work on something else, it’s clearly done. Not eating it is a waste, right?”

“.... so does this mean I need to be on greater watch for a fish-thief?”

“... only if you leave it to go to waste.”

Blake was not, in any way, curious about Yang’s exes.“So what happened to her?” She asked only to be police, and not any other reason.

“She moved up north, and with international travel being expensive, slow or dangerous it just didn’t work out. But what about you, you had any other girlfriend, boyfriends, joyfriends?”

Blake froze for a moment, that wasn’t a topic she wanted to talk about. But… it also wasn’t a topic she didn’t want to talk about. Yang was great, but she was helpful and she didn’t need it. _He_ was her problem, no one else's, and she didn’t want Yang making it her problem. Getting herself hurt. She had to find another topic. “Not really, I tried a few times, but nothing really clicked, but enough talk, let’s do something else with our mouths.” Hopefully, that line sounded as good out loud as it had when she read it.

Yang grinned, but then, Blake pulled back for a moment. She wanted this as her, not as the Blake she was pretending to be. She reached up and removed her ribbon. A kiss, under the night sky. An embrace. No air between them, just them, together.

Then a twitch of the ear, just the edge of a sound, perhaps footsteps, perhaps the wind, or nothing. Part of her wanted to pull away, to end this and cover-up and hide, lest she be found. But she did not, not here, not now. And if someone did come, let them see. Her, Yang, embracing.

**Sterile-**

Alkalies, acids, detergents, abrasives, sanitizers, and spirit solvents. Cleaning solvents. People talk of Faunus smelling of mud and dirt and dust and _dust_ and joked of them hating baths. One of the things you learned if you ever interacted with miners was that it was rare. Only the most basic mines did that. Major mines, the type that Schnee held, provided cleaning supplies, made them mandatory. How generous the companies were, to provide them. How barbaric Faunus were, that they needed to be told to use them.

If one was covered with dust, it was so easy for a single spark to make one an explosive. Machines, elevators, mainline tunnels, those were expensive and so there was mandatory washing lest them be damaged. The end tunnels, where the workers mined new shafts, were not so much, and there were no washing stations there. The chemicals were, of course, the cheapest affordable. Harsh, burning things that left chapped skin and marks on those coming out. When humans think about the White Fang, they never think about them helping to run the aloe and other supplies for workers coming in. Her parents had moved her to it as a safer job, and technically it had been, but it was the source of an old nightmare; fur, feathers, scales, so much easier for dust to hide than skin. At least according to the companies, and so extra demands were made for washing. The half-burned nears of an old mine-hand cat Faunus had given her nightmares.

Blake didn’t like the smell of chemicals, and perhaps the scent of them put her on edge. It was strong, strong enough that even Yang noticed when she went to the bathroom. (Thanks to her, a part of her smugly thought, who knew Yang could be so easily embarrassed). It was the last small, funny thing of the night.

When it came, it came so fast. Impressions, snapshots, more than anything else. She remembers Weiss yelling at Penny as she told them Weiss had been with her. Snarling in anger, she remembered thinking that once again, Weiss was the one acting more like an animal than her. (A shameful, stupid thought that she would never be able to unthink).

Then came the revelation that Penny was made of metal and electricity, not flesh and blood. It had sent Blake...surprised, at least. She knew there had been smells of metal and had assumed some artificial, but she’d assumed it was a limb, not the entire thing. Even so, Blake didn’t care for acting as if some people weren’t really people.

It had been Ruby who finally made Weiss give up. “What is wrong with you?”

And so she had shown them.

Nothing was wrong.

Everything was wrong.

Her wings, her wings were wrong. The mangled and twisted things. Raw and near bleeding, like what you might see from a retired miner who had had them damaged by years of abuse. And that was before the recent damage. She was seeing them on someone her age. It was wings on Weiss. Weiss was a Faunus. Weiss was a Faunus, and the world was wrong.

Then again, Blake couldn’t remember a time when the world was right.

“Who did this to you?” Were the first words out of her mouth, this horror. Weiss being a Faunus was unimportant to this… atrocity. Weiss fought back, like always, like… like what she would have happily thought as a cornered animal with pride not a moment ago. Now… what was it like, what was it like to be this, growing up in a house like that?

She should have stopped, she should have focused on the injured person, injured teammate, injured Faunus, who needed help. Instead, she doesn’t, and their argument escalates until it’s Ruby who brings it down. It’s Ruby who manages to focus on _what needs to be done_. The not-lie slips out easily, and she’s almost disappointed how none questions it. It’s one she was given instruction on. The White Fang had needed medics even when the protests had been no more than signs, and it wasn’t an easy job. The Police liked to target them, even if they marked themselves and didn’t do anything other than aid. Even showing you had the skill outside of a protest became suspicious, hence the lie, everyone knew Faunus were vagabonds.

The work is easy. She knows how to do them when tear gas is flying. Even with unfamiliar, malformed wings, it is almost automatic. Leaving nothing to distract her from her thoughts. As she works the wounds, she returns what has been dancing in the back of her mind. She had compared her to those who worked the mines, but they weren’t the same. Those who come damaged in the mine come damaged all over, even if their traits are the worst off. Skin chapped blistered, and extremities twisted and mutilated, their bodies products, to be used up. Weiss, though, is different. Her skin, her hair, her hands almost all of her is untouched. Smooth, the perfect picture of an aristocrat. Only the wings, the Faunus marker, are mutilated, and they look horrific, almost comparable to ones caught in machinery. Something about the divide is, in its own way, far more ugly than if she had been all injured as if Weiss’s body had been alienated from itself.

The entire time she was working on them, she could smell the antiseptic. It was, nominally a more pleasant one, Beacon apparently not wanting to treat its student's bodies as disposable, but she knew that every time she smelt it, she would see those wings again.

**Rot-**

The rot was an illusion. Rationally she knew it. She had only smelled the blood before, not the rot she was smelling now, and was too far away to smell it even if it existed. Even so, she smelt rot. Weiss was rotting away. The fatal disease that she had smelt, it was this. It was Faunushood, for what disease could be worse for a child of Schnee?

She held a book in front of her, reading, or pretending to, as she thought. Whose child was she? Her mother’s, with a Faunus lover? The obvious answer, the one's humans would pick. Blake thought it equally likely it was her father. He was far from the first man to fuck the Faunus both figuratively and literally, on the other hand, if she was, why not just leave her? White hair was unusual, but it could have been a number of people’s bastards. She could have been with other Faunus, people who could love her.

She could picture this Weiss, not the dual creature that she had become, but one with calloused hands, and wings that, while perhaps dirty, were whole. Perhaps they could have met someone else her age in the White Fang. The story continued, in her head, as she listed to someone about Adam, as they could have left together. Joined beacon together, had someone else, holding hands and...

No, that wasn’t right, the fantasy was definitely taking a turn to romance, and that would have left her without Yang. She didn’t want that. Besides, this wasn’t helping and wouldn't change anything real. Just… the rot around Weiss, it was here. She should be able to piece it all together, it was simple, elementary. But somehow, somehow it wouldn’t come. Everything just swirled a jumbled mess. The poison talk, Weiss’s self-hatred, the incident at the cafeteria.

It was all obvious. It was all a blur. It was all…

Blake sighed and put away the book. This wasn’t working, best to try to sleep.

Sleep, it turned out, was a mistake.

She snuggled next to Yang. She had told her about part of the dream, about the ears, she very carefully had not told her about the rest. Where after they had rotted off, Yang had smiled at her, saying how much prettier she was without them."C'mere. Breathe with me. Nice and slow, that's it. You're safe." Yang said, the real Yang.

Safe. Safe, protected, those were things she never was. Even those who wished to think of Faunus positively might think of them as strong, brave, tough. Gentleness, to be protected, was for humans. Faunus never got the chance to be weak, to be safe. Even young, your parents could not protect you if those in power came for them, they all knew this. Safety, this embrace, was an illusion, but she needed it right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as my headcanon's go, Blake loves the trashiest romance novels in existance.

**Author's Note:**

> Just for clarity I have no direct connection to the original work/author. This was inspired by a comment chain in the main work, about Blake smelling blood on Weiss which inspired me to write this little side-story/ fanfic of fanfic.


End file.
